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Ottawa rips Sri Lanka for deporting ‘security threat’ Bob Rae

Chris Wattie/Reuters

&#8220;To describe me as &#8216;an LTTE supporter,&#8217; as an army spokesman has done today, is a lie, pure and simple,&#8221; Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said Wednesday in an e-mailed statement.

OTTAWA -- The federal government has formally registered its “dismay and displeasure” with the Sri Lankan government over the deportation of Liberal foreign affairs critic, Bob Rae.

During the dispute, Mr. Rae called a Sri Lankan government spokesman a liar for branding him a supporter of the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels.

The diplomatic incident comes shortly after Sri Lankan protesters caused disruptions in Ottawa and Toronto that have attempted to draw attention to the violence in their homeland, but have only angered many Canadians.

“It is absurd to suggest that Mr. Rae represents a threat to Sri Lankan national security, or is a supporter of LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam],” said Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Emma Welford.

“We have registered to the Sri Lankan government our dismay and displeasure concerning this unacceptable treatment of a Canadian parliamentarian. Mr. Rae received consular assistance throughout this ordeal.”

“Upon arrival, Mr. Rae was detained, accused of being a national security threat by the government of Sri Lanka, and refused entry into the country.”

Mr. Rae, who rejected the accusation against him as defamatory, was deported from Sri Lanka on Wednesday.

“He is barred from entering the country. He is being deported. . . . We have intelligence information that he is supporting the LTTE,” chief immigration controller P.B. Abeykoon said, according to Agence France-Presse in Colombo, the country’s capital.

“To describe me as ‘an LTTE supporter,’ as an army spokesman has done today, is a lie, pure and simple,” Mr. Rae said in an e-mailed statement.

“The Sri Lankan government has made this decision because they have apparently reached some ill-conceived and defamatory conclusions about me. But after 30 years of public service at home and abroad, I have to say, this decision reflects on them, and not on me.”

Mr. Rae has been involved in the Sri Lankan civil-war issue for more than a decade, as chairman of the Forum of Federations, and later as an MP. He has travelled extensively throughout the country, and has met people on both sides of the conflict.

Mr. Rae said the Sri Lankan High Commission in Ottawa granted him a visa, and he discussed his visit to the country with High Commissioner Daya Perera, as well as the Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa.

Mr. Perera told Canwest News Service that a “very upset” Mr. Rae telephoned him from the Colombo airport to see what he could do at, what was then, 1:30 a.m. local time in Sri Lanka. The envoy began calling back home to senior government officials, but, at that hour, he could reach no one.

“I said, ‘I’ll do what can,’ ” Mr. Perera recalled. “I like Mr. Rae. There was nothing I could do about it.”

Mr. Perera said the High Commission had no information that Mr. Rae was a security threat when it issued him his visa, but he could not reconcile that with the information that his country’s immigration officials apparently had.

Mr. Perera said he planned to convey the Canadian government’s concern over the matter to his own, and he hoped that, if Mr. Rae was willing, he could meet with him to talk about the incident.

The envoy said he hoped the two countries could put the incident behind them. “Our relationship is far too strong to be broken by this.”

Mr. Rae arrived in Colombo on Tuesday evening, and was delayed for 12 hours at the airport. He was in the company of Canadian consular officials.

“Since that time, I have spent over 12 hours at the airport, trying to find a reason for this decision,” Mr. Rae said in an e-mail before he was put on a plane out of the country.

“I have had the full support of officials here and in Ottawa. The government of Sri Lanka is sticking to its position, and I am being put on a plane to London at 1:15 p.m. Sri Lankan time. I shall be back in Canada some time Thursday.”

The Tamil Tigers, who have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state for the country’s Tamil minority, were recently defeated by Sri Lankan military forces in a civil war that’s believed to have killed as many as 70,000 people.

At least 200,000 were forced from their homes during the recent violence.

Mr. Rae has accused Canada of not doing enough to assist Sri Lanka.

In a May blog posting, Mr. Rae said he asked Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon to go to Sri Lanka.

“Canada’s voice has been pathetically silent, missing the point that this is a catastrophe in the making,” Mr. Rae wrote on May 27. “Canada’s absence and silence are a disgrace.”

On a May 19 blog entry, Mr. Rae vowed to go back to the affected areas. “But it is hard not to cry at what has been lost, how much life has been destroyed, and what must still be done to bring justice to the peace that is being proclaimed so loudly.”